Cyber Genius (12 page)

I had paid just enough attention after 9/11 to understand
that Congress had passed incomprehensibly complex laws allowing our own
government to spy on every single citizen in the country and probably the world
if they were feeling particularly paranoid that day. Since I could only take
care of myself, not the stupid among us, I did what I had to do to prevent privacy
invasion at the time. Until recently, I hadn’t even owned a cell phone.

Graham had apparently gone even further. He’d erased his
existence from cyberspace.

Leave it to Tudor to wipe out the entire populace—or just
their mindless phone conversations. I was hoping that the worm had only
consumed data from his Brit servers—which would be whatever he and his fellow
boarding school nerds had been up to these last ten years. A nice size package,
but not the Holy Grail. I had no way of knowing the actual extent of the
destruction from his panicked text, but I assumed the media would soon be
blasting doom and gloom if the NSA’s entire database had been destroyed.

Mallard was nowhere in sight when I reached the kitchen. A
lovely salad with a slice of grilled salmon on top was neatly covered and
waiting in the refrigerator. If it was meant for Graham, tough luck.

Carrying the salad back to my office, I took a break from
crime solving.

First, I investigated the external hard drive that had been
added to my Whiz. All Graham’s Sooper-Sekrid files had been transferred into
the removable drive, leaving the Whiz showing only my virtual assistant
accounts.

Graham and I had come to uneasy terms over sharing
information. He left his satellites open for my use. I didn’t try to use them
for anything dangerous. I had my old Dell laptop for my more personal files,
but we both knew we could access anything the other did if we wanted to bad
enough. Mostly, we were too busy to poke into each other’s business, and
neither of us had a private life to hide.

I really didn’t want the cops messing with some of my
admittedly shady clients, but it would look strange to have a blank computer. The
external would easily pop out and go into my hiding place or my tote. I moved
my private email files into it as well. Graham might not care if I’d been
hunting my missing siblings in Africa, but the police might get wrong ideas if
they saw my sources.

For my lunch break, I checked on personal matters. I studied
the Swiss bank account files that Graham had sent me. He’d apparently copied
transfer slips from our grandfather’s bank account before Rotten Reggie took it
over. The number of digits to the left of the decimal point on each slip was
gratifyingly enormous, well beyond my ability to spend immediately. If the
money actually existed, we could educate our entire tribe, including the
missing African twins, and still buy back this house from Graham.

We’d be the ridiculously rich I sneered at. I’d figure out
how to handle the irony when it happened. Investing the million in funds we’d
already retrieved was difficult enough. I needed it to be safe, but I also
needed it to grow to achieve all our goals. I chewed nails over every stock
market mood swing. This MacroWare glitch wasn’t making my nervous stomach very
happy.

I returned to admiring dollar signs. I had no clue how to
hack Swiss banks, but at least these transfers narrowed down the accounts to
two different firms. I sent questions about finding lost passwords or accessing
old accounts to some of my Swiss contacts and e-mailed the banks with similar
inquiries.

Salad consumed, I turned back to the files Sean had sent.
The dossier on Adolph Nasser, the hotel chef, was pretty much as he’d said—a
few drunken driving convictions, complaints from former employees, a checkered
employment history. I didn’t think this was highly unusual in the restaurant
industry.

Adolph had worked briefly with MacroWare, before Tray
Fontaine’s time and only as a line chef. Apparently Stiles didn’t like drunks
on his staff. The date of one of the convictions on the west coast coincided
with his departure from MacroWare and his hire in D.C. as the hotel’s head
chef. That had been a couple of years ago.

Since Adolph had come out ahead in that deal, I couldn’t see
why he’d carry a grudge worthy of killing anyone, but I opened my summary case
document and added him to my suspect list.

MacroWare’s private chef, Tray Fontaine, looked like a
golden boy who could do no wrong. Graduated from a fancy west coast culinary
school, interned under a chef even I’d heard of, he took his first big position
at an L.A. restaurant known to be frequented by Hollywood stars. How he’d ended
up operating MacroWare’s private dining room was unknown. Sean had noted that
Patra was looking into it.

I went back into the hotel’s employee files and searched on
“Wilhelm.” I didn’t find anything. Interesting. Biting my thumbnail and
narrowing my eyes at the screen, I put together a few scenarios in which
“Wilhelm” might not show on employee rosters—none of them legal, if that was
his actual name.

Had the mysterious Wilhelm been working at the hotel Wednesday
when Stiles was poisoned?

I sent an email to the hotel’s HR department from my Patty Pasko,
accountant, address asking if Wilhelm “Nasser” was employed in their
restaurant, using the chef’s last name to catch their attention. I hinted that
“Wilhelm” might be in for a windfall. Hey, if phishing worked for Nigerian
bankers, why not me?

Next, I dug around in the police files Graham had been
sending me. Nothing new on the medical front. The PR guy who didn’t like salsa had
emerged from his coma and still wasn’t talking much. It had been hotel staff who
had mentioned the ambulance had been called to a meeting room hired by a Thomas
Alexander.

Thomas Alexander
,
huh. Graham had said
he’d
booked the
meeting room, but naturally, he wouldn’t use his own name. I made a note to
check out his alias, just to see where he’d picked it up.

So, why had the police shown up on our doorstep asking for
Graham if they only knew about Thomas Alexander?

I dug deeper and discovered the PR/salsa guy, Herkness, had
given the cops a list of people who were supposed to meet after the dinner. He hadn’t
given Graham’s full name. He’d just listed him as Day—short for Amadeus—and
said he was head of a security team Stiles had hired. He’d clammed up when the
cops had asked him why the outside security team had been needed.

MacroWare wouldn’t want news of a spyhole in a test program
to go public. This whole case stunk of cover-up.

It had actually been the FBI that had connected the dots
between Thomas Alexander, “Day,” security, and Graham. The police files didn’t
provide
how
they’d made the
connection. I only saw the transcript of the phone call between the feds and
the police captain who’d come knocking on our door. So they really didn’t know
anything and were on their own phishing expedition.

No wonder the good captain had showed up personally and
backed off so easily. It hadn’t been my acting abilities that had driven him
away so much as his doubts and distrust of another agency.

My ego could take the blow. And distrust didn’t mean the
cops wouldn’t follow through. Without my cooperation, they just had a really
tough job getting a warrant on this crummy bit of speculation. They’d have to
dig deeper.

I sent Graham a message asking for Thomas Alexander’s files,
just to annoy him.

Most of the files on Kita provided details of what I already
knew or guessed. His faulty immigration papers prevented him from working at MacroWare,
but Kita had worked with Tray Fontaine in several of his restaurant ventures.

Tray’s statement to the police said he’d hired Kita as an
independent contractor upon occasion after Stiles developed a taste for Asian dishes.
When Tray had heard Adolph needed a
poissonnier
, he’d promised to send MacroWare’s
business Adolph’s way if he hired Kita.

That call sounded perfectly legit, the good-old-boy network
alive and well. Of course, that network often involved blackmail, bribery, and
the usual male score-keeping, so I couldn’t totally disregard the connection,
especially given Euan’s hints of sharks and immigration papers in return for
favors.

So far, the police had determined that Kita had been shot with
a high-power Magnum handgun and a silencer. He’d been gunned down in the
apartment and shoved into the closet—a professional job. In a town filled with
wealth, spies, and military, a professional hitman was feasible but required
sharks
with lots of money.

I was enjoying that fishy image too much.

A few weeks ago I’d come across a professional hit job
sponsored by a mysterious cabal called Top Hat. Sean and Patra had helped me
catch the local Mafia connection, but we couldn’t touch the wealthy bad guys
who did the hiring.

And so far, I couldn’t pin down a connection between a
purportedly good corporate executive like Stiles with the rotten greedmeisters in
Top Hat.

The police interviews with the rest of the hotel’s kitchen
staff were less than enlightening. Stiles’ server, Maggie O’Ryan, claimed not
to know the new fish chef’s name. Even Euon’s interview merely said Kita was a
hard worker who tested his soups before serving. She didn’t mention that they
were old friends.

Poor Kita had no public mourners—which didn’t mean there
weren’t private ones. The information trail I needed to follow wasn’t on paper
or in computers. If I’d learned nothing else since coming to D.C., it was that
I had to hit the streets far more than I liked.

I had pretty much spent the last ten years in Atlanta
researching from a musty basement, sometimes 24/7. Hibernation was fine when
the research involved ancient history and nothing more vital than someone’s PhD
thesis.

But we were talking Tudor’s life and career here, not to
mention that of a hardworking chef and a couple of gazillionaires. And Graham.
Sitting still, reading other people’s research, just wasn’t cutting it.

Since MacroWare had yet to publicly admit the flawed
beta-ware, I worked on the assumption that Stiles had died over the discovery
of the spyhole Tudor had reported. It didn’t make logical sense just yet, but
it was all I had.

Someone inside MacroWare knew where the bodies were buried,
so to speak.

I was about to dig deeper to see what the police had found
on Kita’s phone and computer when my mobile rang.

The screen didn’t display the caller, which wasn’t unusual.
No one I knew revealed their phone identity, although I had EG and Nick’s
numbers in my contacts so I could recognize their calls. But the international phone
code was warning enough that it was my mother. I debated not answering, but
Magda and I had developed a truce when she’d allowed EG to stay here. I owed
her the respect of listening.

“Is Tudor there?” she demanded the instant I answered.

“Who’s asking?” This was not me being snide. This was me
knowing Magda wouldn’t sound this upset if she’d learned on her own that Tudor
wasn’t where he should be. Someone had
told
her. Given the multiplicity of her government contacts, I could only guess
which one.

She let out a sigh, signaling that she’d got my unstated
message. Most families have their own shorthand communication. Ours was more
like telegraphed code.

“My line is secure, so it doesn’t matter who asked. I just
want the answer,” she said.

“Tudor has proved that no computer is secure,” I warned.
“Some dangerous people want his discovery covered up. He’s safe, for now.”

“The state department is looking for him,” she admitted,
revealing her source. “I can get him out of the country. Just let me make the
arrangements, and I’ll get back to you,” she said briskly, with no obvious
relief.

I rubbed my brow. The feds had already called Magda—so very
not good. Wasn’t that just a little far beyond paranoid?

But this was business as usual for our mother. She’d find a
friend of a friend who would provide a military helicopter that would fly him
to an undisclosed base and disappear him in a jungle somewhere, where he could
probably bring down the internet in truth.

My goal was to break that pattern. “He’s been accepted by
MIT and Stanford. He’s going to school, not living in jungles,” I informed her.

“Don’t be ridiculous. What does Tudor need with school? They
need him more than he does them. He’s far better off—”

“He’s
sixteen
. He
may have a skull full of complex gray matter, but he has no clue what he wants
out of life. If he wants to run around playing spy when he gets older, that’s
fine. Right now, he gets a home and an education until he’s had a chance to
study his opportunities. Heaven only knows, half the countries in the world
could use his skills just to update their antiquated websites. He could unite
all the health organizations and get them communicating with each other.
Wouldn’t that be more useful?”

“Not if he’s in prison,” she said grimly. “Or blown up by
people who think he’s too dangerous.”

“That’s your experience. You made your choices for your
reasons. Nick and I were forced to follow along when we were too young to do
otherwise. But we have other choices now, and I intend to let the kids explore
them.”

I’d run away from my half-siblings when I’d been too young
and helpless to save them, and they’d been breaking my heart. I was older now—and
not quite so helpless. I might not have a real education, but I had a better
grasp of what I could do. They could still end up breaking my heart, but at
least I would know that I’d done all that I could to give them the best life
possible.

Magda went silent for a few seconds, digesting my argument.
It was similar to the one she’d lost over EG. Our mother wasn’t dumb, just
defensive. “You call me the minute the pigs get anywhere near my boy,” she
finally said in her best menacing tones.